Matthew Bohnsack

djb has course notes for his fall 2004 class on UNIX security holes online. They might be worth going through.

The CS Department at UNM has a bunch of colloquia that seem very interesting. Trouble is, I don’t have time during the day to attend any of them.

Why in this day and age aren’t these things recorded on video or even just in audio and then posted on the web after the fact so that those who don’t have time or even the whole global community of interested people can benefit? Isn’t this what higher education is supposed to be about?

I’m certain that the ECE department has similar colloquia going on, but their’s aren’t even listed on the web.

This backwoods refusal to acknowledge what’s not even the future but the very real present is pathetic IMHO. I’d really like to hear these talks. I pay for the privilege through taxes and tuition, but I’m unable to do so because of some hangup about meatspace exclusivity. Universities that get this kind of thing are going to eat UNM’s lunch.

If it’s not on the web, it never happened - it doesn’t exist. Period. ^*

^* - Except for the obvious national security and intellectual property cases.

For the last two months, I’ve undertaken a number of measures to optimize my health. With what I’m trying to accomplish these days, I need the extra energy, and the limited time that I have must be used as efficiently as possible. To be able to hack on my own projects with the greatest of effect, it makes sense that I should first hack my own body to close to an optimum state. That’s my goal.

I’m trying to follow most of the suggestions found in Ray Kurzweil’s Fantastic Voyage: The Science Behind Radical Life Extension. After Thanksgiving, I changed my diet to a South Beach-style low carbohydrate one and started a supplementation schedule based on Fantastic Voyage recommendations. I bought myself a fancy treadmill for Christmas, have been using it ever since, and am getting stronger every day: brisk walk at first - solid run for the last few weeks - 40 minutes a day / 6 days a week.

I might reveal my exact supplementation, diet, and exercise schedules at a later point. For now, here’s part of what I’m doing with supplements:

• SuperNutrution Easy Swallow Opti-Pack (full course of 3 packets of 4 tablets each)
• SuperNutrution Think Clearly (3 times a day)
• Nordic Naturals Ultimate Omega (1000 mg 3 times a day)

• See the supplementation section of A Short Guide to a Long Life for more. I’m doing most of what’s listed there.

Is all of this crap working? Damn right it is! I feel (and look) awesome. I’ve gone from 142 pounds on Nov 29th to 124 pounds as of this morning. If you crank the numbers, this turns out to be a weight loss of 18 pounds or 12.68% of my original weight in two months. At 5 feet and 6 inches in height, this took me from a BMI of 22.9 to 20.0. More energy? I used to get up at 8:00am and be in bed before 10:00pm. Now I’m going strong from from 4:30am to 9:30pm. All this has easily added 3 hours per day to my life. Say I retire at age 60. If so, I’ll gain an extra 3.62 years of productivity in the 29 years between now and then. That’s like getting six free years. One can do an awful lot of good work in six years!

I’m going to have to get a doctor and start getting a number of diagnostics periodically run to know the full effect of this program and fully gage its progress, but I fully intend to do so.

The graph (courtesy of OpenOffice.org) is fairly impressive:

The election is well underway in Iraq. Here’s a liveblog of the events. Geraldo’s freaking about the huge turnout.

Update 7:15am on Sunday: 72% voter turnout!

Update 1:58pm on Sunday: Maybe more like 60% turnout. An analysis of Kerry’s response from the mighty Hog on Ice is worth reading.

• Install 3d Desktop and make the Mac weenies jealous of my Linux desktop.
• Test new Ubuntu Linux Live CD on my laptop and consider ditching Fedora.
• The cedar plague

An Introduction to Stateless Linux (PDF)

I received the following email message this morning (my reply is included):

* Some random person unknown to me <somebody@yahoo.com> [Jan 25, 2005 at 07:55:20PM MST]:
> I saw you have an electrical engineering background from your online
> resume.
>
> Would you be able to build me a prototype circuit that logs the
> presses of two momentary push button switches and transfers the data
> via modem to a server daily?
>
> If so, how shall we proceed?

Hello random person,

I would be able to build a prototype of this system, but I don't currently
have time to undertake new projects.

Sorry.

I have no idea if this request was legit, but I’m getting a lot of unsolicited requests these days. I’m nkot trying to brag, and the above is pretty random, but because of it and as a result of some other thinking I’ve been doing in this area, I’m becoming increasingly confident that a good business (any kind of business) can be marketed and conducted on the Internet today with a kind of huge success that was never before possible. The Internet craze/bubble hasn’t burst — the real and sustainable one is only beginning, and I’ve got to get my ass in position to profit from it. I’m working on a few ideas. We’ll see what happens.

On Thursday, as an assignment for my ECE536 class, I’m giving a 15 minute presentation on Mark Weiser’s 1991 Scientific American article, "The Computer for the Twenty-First Century ". Dr. Weiser is considered to be the father of ubiquitous computing. The article’s specific trend speculations are a bit dated 14 years after the fact, and I disagree with some of his thesis, but the general thrust of the article is wonderfully prescient. Much of what Weiser predicted is now integrated in some fashion into our daily lives. He was quite the visionary.

More stuff about ubiquitous computing
here and here.

Now that I’ve read the paper and thought about it a bit, I need to write the presentation… More when I’m finished.

The textbook for ECE536 is Andrew Tanenbaum’s Distributed Systems: Principles and Paradigms. It’s a pretty good book, but I find it very entertaining that Tanenbaum might be most famous for the stuff he gets wrong:

• Linux is obsolete (1992)
• http://www.electoral-vote.com/ (2004) - He projected Kerry to be the winner of the 2004 US Presidential election all day long on election day, though the site has since been “corrected”. Here’s where Dr. Tanenbaum takes credit for the site.

Update 02005-01-27: slides for the presentation.

• This story about how a guy hacked a PS2 controller to exhaust the problem-space of Grand Theft Auto is fairly interesting.
• waxy.org seems worth visiting.
• A Regan stamp comes out on Feb 9th. I’m going to buy a 5-10 year supply:
  
• I like XM Radio so much that I bought the company (or at least some of its stock).